What We May Be
by lena1987
Summary: 1505, Bavaria. Vlad finds a woman and her son: one dying, one dead. Aided by her witchcraft skills, they begin a search for a way to walk in the sun that will span centuries. Eventual Vlad x OC.
1. Chapter 1

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost.

* * *

 _There is a woman who walks the lands, hooded and cloaked. She is an old woman; bent, frail. Across the grass, over the hills, she walks. She is in all of the forests, all of the lakes, all of the lands. She has many names, yet there is only one of her. And she is searching; always, she is searching. Her name is Baba Yaga, and she is searching for me._

 **1505, Bavaria**

I feel cold. The grass is shining beneath me, with the golden light of the sun. But I am cold.

I do not understand it. My eyes are closed, the sun should warm my eyelids, should heat my hands that are outstretched beside me. It doesn't.

I open my eyes, and I blink. Once, twice. The air is too light, too strange. My heart is pounding, racing in my chest. My chest. My chest heaves, and my body follows. Now I am sitting, palms on the ground behind me. The breaths come in quickly now; my memory is returning.

My boy. My boy. I am running through the forest, pushing through the trees, my black hair catching on the branches. I want to scream but I am terrified and the words catch in my throat.

I run and run and run – the forest is moving around me, I hear the leaves whispering to me, telling me their secrets, asking for my boy. But I cannot answer – I cannot answer.

I find my boy, lying face down, the leaves around him stained with blood. Horse's hooves have trampled his body– someone has killed him and they have not even moved his tiny form.

Now, my voice comes. I moan and thrash my fists on the ground, I wail and scream. I do not form words, I cannot think them.

My boy.

Like a mad woman, like Baba Yaga, I feel around on the ground, looking for anything. My eyes are trained on the body of my boy, but my hands flit around, looking for anything.

When they find something, I turn. I see boots; black leather boots. I curl my fingers around their ankles, still wailing, still screaming.

Strong hands hook under my arms and pull me up. They hold me at arms length as I drop my weight onto them, but the man does not budge. His arms stay straight.

My head lolls back and he takes one step closer, his arms finally bending and then he bends me, too, folding my body up like an infant in his arms. I do not want to leave my son and I feel my strength return for one fleeting moment as I scream that I will not leave my boy, my little boy.

The man pauses, as if deliberating. He shifts the weight of me and now I am cradled against his chest and his other arm is holding my son.

I want to ask him how he can bear the weight – drop me instead and drag me behind him on a rope. Give my boy the dignity of both of his arms. But I cannot speak. The arm that is holding my boy has a gash on the wrist – a clean cut, blood still dripping from it. There is a dampness on my tongue. It tastes of iron, of something bitter that I cannot place.

In my daze, I see the man bend his head of dark hair down towards me. Brown eyes connect with mine.

"I am sorry," I hear a gruff voice say and when his mouth moves I see that it is his.

His mouth moves again and my fingers grip onto his vest.

"I tried," he says.

I turn my face away from him, and stare at the lifeless body of my boy, held in his other arm. My boy has blood on his mouth, too.

"I tried."

The man sets me down beside a tree. The trunk is thin, the branches are too wispy.

"The other one," I say. I have found my voice.

He turns in confusion and I point at the tree beside it. "That one."

Without a word, he begins to dig at the base of the oak, quickly making a deep grave close to the roots. I nod in approval. The roots are huge – they snake around the trunk. They will protect my boy.

I notice that he digs with his bare hands – yet not once does he falter.

My boy's face is so beautiful that I do not want to cover it. But I do. I place coins over his closed eyes and wrap his face with my own scarf. I pray; to God, to Baba Yaga, asking them to take care of my boy. Protect him, return him to the earth.

I try to lift my son's body but I cannot. My arms sag under the weight. The man is at my side in an instant and, somehow, he knows. He places his arms under mine, so that my skin is still against that of my boy's, and lifts for me. Together we place him into the grave.

When nature has taken his body, swallowed him up with dirt and debris, I stand back and look at the freshly covered ground.

"Where are the other bodies?" I ask the man. For how else have we managed to get here, and not come across the other bodies of those who died in their efforts to kill us.

"In the lake."

"The lake?" I turn to him, incredulous. His head of black hair moves up and down in a nod.

"It won't like it," I admonish. "It'll spit them back out."

His dark brows fold over in a frown. "How do you know?"

I turn away from him, from his confusion, his bewilderment. I turn back to my boy and kneel beside where his head is, only a few feet below my hands.

The man crouches down beside me and trails his fingers over the disturbed earth.

"I am sorry," he says again. "I did try."

It is a poor apology for a woman who has lost her son. It is not an apology at all, but rather an admission of guilt. Not for my boy's death, for never did I believe that my boy could be saved once I saw their swords drawn. It is an apology for this man's failing, because somehow he should have been able to breathe life into my boy, but he hasn't.

"I know," I say. And I do know.

Why?

Because he managed to breathe life into me.

* * *

 **1509, Seville**

I stretch out on the bed, basking like a cat in the sunshine that my skin cannot even feel.

"My lady?" I hear the foreign voice outside of the door and rise to open it, revealing the man's servant Shkelgim, a gypsy man, like me.

"The Prince would like to see you," he says, and hands me a goblet of rich, dark red liquid. I feel my strange, sharp fangs descending at the scent of it and nod, shutting the door to his kind, old face as my own rapidly transforms into that of a monster.

When the man, or Vlad, as I now know him to be, told me of what I had become, I heaved onto the grass. Or I would have heaved, in another life. In my new, dead life, I dry wretched like a milksop who'd had too much Bavarian beer.

He'd given me three days, to decide. But I had shook my head with a newfound resolve – I did not _want_ to live. My son was not alive; why should I be? I wanted to die. I held my wrist under his chin and said: "kill me, so I do not live."

But Vlad only bent his nose to my skin and breathed in the scent, a strange mixture of blood and ice, he told me later, and dropped my wrist. It was then that he had introduced me to Shkelgim, whose blood, more often than not, flows through my veins instead of my own. I do not know how this gypsy is still alive, yet somehow he is. But perhaps we will need to find a new one, soon.

I finish the goblet and stand at the window, looking out at the forest that begins from the back of this beautiful house. I whistle softly, calling to Baba Yaga – has she seen my son? I hear a faint sound carry through the wind and I smile.

"My lady?"

"Yes," I turn and walk out of the room, down the corridor, up heavy wooden stairs and onto the man's floor. Everything is darker here, richer. I do not like it, truth be told. The carpets are too red for my taste, the wood too brown, the tapestries too dark. But I walk down the corridor anyway, trailing my fingers along the wall until I come to the door at the end that I open myself, not waiting for Shkelgim **.**

Vlad is standing at his window, an identical goblet in his hand. He is exactly as he was when I first saw him – the same hair, the same body, the same skin. No new wrinkles, no new slivers of grey. He is wearing black. He always wears black.

"Alvina," he says quietly and tips the goblet in my direction. Perhaps in another life I would have curtsied to this Prince. Now I nod and go to stand at his side, looking out at the trees.

How beautiful this land is! How warm! Perfect for Baba Yaga, and perfect for me, her descendent. The trees are endless, the land rolling here and flat there, and the sun! The sun shines decadently, like a beer that is cool instead of warm.

I stretch out my hand to the pocket of sun near the window ledge and sigh in delight when my skin glows. Beside me, Vlad does the same but his sizzles like he has laid it on coals and not the wooden ledge. He hisses and removes it. I wonder, as I have done so many times, why Baba Yaga is still protecting me, daughter of nature, even though I am dead. But, as I have done so many times, I smile and silently thank her. She does not need to explain herself.

"Have you found anything?" Vlad asks grimly. He is always grim.

"Still looking," I say absentmindedly, then look up at him. "And the silk? Are you still pulling the line, a hand length each day?" He nods. "And you retie it?" He nods again.

"We shall see what comes out of the lake when you reach the end," I say and cross my fingers, pinching the skin between my thumb and index finger twice.

"That is why I called for you," he admits. "We need to leave."

"Oh," I say flatly, though I am not surprised. This land is too nice for us. "Why?"

"The same reasons…" he shrugs. "And perhaps I was too obvious when I raided that last ship. Their monopoly on the trade routes is becoming rather vexing."

I laugh – I can't help it. I throw my head back and laugh, feeling my long hair brushing my waist. Vlad laughs too, but only for the smallest of seconds.

He is looking at me – not fondly, not tenderly, only kindly. I see myself in the reflection of his eyes; still pale, still slim, brown eyes that only have the slightest of wrinkles at the sides, pink lips and black hair. I still look one and thirty, though by my count I am now five and thirty.

"We will leave before the silk line finishes," I predict, thinking of how I had tied foot after foot of thin silk, cast it into the lake and fastened it to a nearby tree. We have been waiting until Vlad pulls out enough that we are able to see what the lake gives him in return, on the end of the hook. There is always something. The spell always gives _something._

"And you will be right," he smiles softly.

"Where?" I ask next.

"I thought…" he looks down at his feet, then back at me. "Where do _you_ want to go?"

Me? Vlad has never asked me.

"To my son, to your son," I answer immediately, then shrug. I know we cannot – not yet. "To the sea," I say next. "Do you know, I have never seen it?"

"Yes you have," he replies blandly, undoubtedly thinking of our journeys over the last four years.

"No." A man wouldn't understand, even an undead one. "I haven't. Haven't ever put my feet in it, haven't ever cast a spell with the salt water."

Then I think. I feel a telltale chill. "To the sea, but where it rains. We haven't tried sea water and rain water before." I am thinking of new spells, different mixes I can try.

I am trying to find a way for Vlad to walk in the sun. I can, yet my maker cannot. It is the most amusing conundrum for me, as the loss of my son and the strangeness of being a monster has made me a cynic. But Vlad feels the loss of the sun keenly. He wants to walk in it again. And what he wants, I want.

He nods. "To England, then."

.

.

.

* * *

A/N

Welcome to the story. I am aiming for a short, AU explanation of Vlad's years between the ending of the film and perhaps modern day but more than likely it'll leave off somewhere before that. I've taken inspiration from the Baba Yaga figure (baba: old woman, yaga: witch) in European folklore. My character is greatly influenced by Philippa Gregory's wonderful depicture of Elizabeth Woodville, a woman who is a descendent of the water goddess Melusina. A good read, if you have the time.


	2. Chapter 2

**1505, Bavaria: Vlad**

What possesses me to follow the scent of blood?

The same thing that always possesses me, I suppose; lust, intoxication, hunger. I am drawn to it like a bee to pollen, salt to meat. It has taken me not a small amount of years to learn self control, and I am still learning. The idea that I may finish off whatever is waiting for me in these woods is in the back of my mind, but I can hear the tiny heartbeat of a child beating wildly and I push the thoughts aside.

I run, until I come upon the boy first. I cannot save him, I cannot. His body has been trampled by hooves, his sweet golden skinned face is already pale. His breath comes in gasps, but even as I stand over him, confused and torn, he opens his eyes and takes one gurgling breath, then he is limp. On the way to him I found men who were boasting in strange tongues about their finished work; I could not understand them, but for once I am thankful for being able to sniff out the sweat of adrenaline, of excitement, for surely these are man who have killed. And so they are my meal.

And then I hear the screams. Not the mother, not the mother, not the mother, I chant, but I see a woman running and crying, looking like a woman of the wilds. Black hair follows, whipping past the branches. She is as dark as a moor. That is my first thought. She does not even see me; she throws herself on the ground over her son, wailing and screaming, her face sometimes on her boy, and other times raised to the sky, as if she is complaining to God, or the trees. Perhaps both. She is silent for a long moment, and I see that she has collapsed. Then I walk to her and crouch beside her, taking in the blood seeping from her side. I know Shkelgim will be upon us soon, and he will tell me to stop, but I tear my skin all the same, and I let the blood drip into her mouth. She coughs and splutters, and I step back.

I do not know how long it takes her, but soon enough she is awake again, pawing around the ground, searching with her fingers. Searching for what? Me?

Her fingers grip onto my boots, and I cannot look at her like this. I cannot look at any woman like this. This could be my wife, my Mirena. This could be my son, my Ingeras. So I pull her up and easily shoulder her weight; she could be a sheet of parchment, or a glass of wine, she is so slight.

Later she asks me, where are the bodies, and I tell her they are in the lake. We are beside the trees, and I am digging a grave for her son with my hands. She looks at me, and life comes to her black eyes for a second.

"It won't like it," she admonishes me. In the second that life comes to her, I see her anew – her voice is stronger, her breath comes quicker.

"How do you know?" I ask desperately, but she turns away from me. I feel cold for a moment; I am never cold.

When I have finished covering her son with fresh earth, I hear a bubbling of the lake. I turn and in horror, I see the bodies of the killers have floated to the surface, in the middle of the lake. They are so still that I think they could be resting on the water.

"Why did they…" I begin, looking for a motive, wondering how far I will need to take her before I can leave her somewhere safe, away from murderous thieves.

But the woman beside me takes a deep breath in and blows. I feel the air from her mouth graze my skin as it goes out onto the lake, and suddenly the men drop. They are not swallowed slowly, the water around them drops, and they drop with it. They are no more. It takes only a small moment, and soon the water is still, with no ripples at all.

I turn to the woman, fighting off a shudder of revulsion. I realise why she has been targeted. I realise that I have saved a witch.

* * *

 **1510, Calais: Vlad**

After five years with the witch, we have come to an agreement. She wanted to die, I did not want to see her wasted. And so we travel together, searching for a way for me to walk in the sunlight. She can. How? I do not know, but I am thankful that she, at least, wishes to extend such a blessing to me.

Alvina asks that I take her to the sea, where it rains. I know of nowhere other than England that has such temperamental weather. We are in the port of Calais, and we are walking on one of the beaches. It does not rain, not like the English mainland, but we are on our way, at least. I am waiting for the tide to change, for the wind to be favourable, and then we will take a ship across the channel.

It is sunset. I like sunset. I can see clearly even at night, but sunset is the reminder that there has been a day; a day of sun, a day of light. I have not walked in the light for many, many years.

Alvina is at the water's edge. She looks like a nymph. She is wearing a lilac coloured gown, which is tempting fate, I tell her, as purple is a colour only for royals. Remain inconspicuous, _please,_ Alvina. She laughed when I said that, and clapped her hands and stuck her hand in the pocket of her skirt and produced a long, purple ribbon. She held her palm out to me, and I placed a charm into it, and she tied the charm onto the ribbon.

Now she is standing in the water, her skirts held in her teeth, her ankles bare in the salty liquid. I swallow and look away from her show of skin. I do not know why, but my ever lasting mouth feels dry when I catch a glimpse of her calves. I look down at the sand and bury my feet in it instead.

Alvina is dangling the charm into the water, whispering something or other, I do not try to hear her. She swirls it around and around. I stand and watch her for hours, until the moon is high above us. It is one of the biggest moons I have seen. I raise my thumb and try to cover the circle with it; I cannot.

"A good sign," Alvina nods at the moon, and at me. I shrug in response. I am in no hurry; all I have is time.

* * *

 **1519, England: Alvina**

I am late. Very, very late. I pick up my skirts and run through the streets, ignoring the whistles and calls from men stumbling out of taverns. It is not proper for a woman to run, certainly not in the evening, so they think they can make a meal out of me. I politely do not tell them that I lack only the bread to make a meal out of _them._

I rush through the alleys and past an endless stream of rickety houses, perched precariously along the cobblestone streets. Finally, I come to the destination I am seeking.

The market in the evening is bustling, still. It is respectable – I have reached the affluent side of London, and so I slow down and adjust my French hood, making sure that my hair is neat underneath. I do not like these hoods – they make me feel dowdy and heavy, but English women are not seen without one, and so I play my part well. At least it is not a Spanish hood, like the one the Spanish Queen wears. I feel sorry for her, for 'Good Queen Kath', which is what they call her on the streets around me. But I am not sorry that the English woman who is tempting her husband likes the French hood, because now we all of us can wear the dainty little thing, instead of the box.

I run a hand over my necklace of pearls and step daintily past the lines of ribbon, smiling cheekily when the young men bow and gesture for me to enter. I am feeling pretty, in a dress of spring green, the waist bound tight enough to highlight the swell of my breasts that do not thud with a heartbeat.

I walk slowly around the market, until I arrive. Vlad is there, in black of course, as he said he would be, as he always is. He notices me immediately and shakes his head, arching his eyebrow ever so slightly. I shrug my shoulders and go to stand at his side and we watch the actors read their lines. It is a play, about love. Courtly love, of course. Where the women are ethereal moons and the men are stars that circle them. It is ridiculous to me, but I clap along nonetheless.

When the play finishes, Vlad offers me his arm and I place my gloved hand onto his sleeve.

"Did you find anything, wife?" he asks, and I grin like a cat.

Our façade in London is this: we are married, a husband and wife from a rich estate near Calais **.** Exotic enough to be interesting, but safe enough to move through Tudor England without tempting the King's paranoia. Henry's England has paranoia by the bucket-loads, Vlad tells me. He says that the red headed King sees enemies behind broom sticks, and that I had better be careful and not be too obvious, I had better not consult herbalists or read the cards for noble little girls that we sometimes meet on the roads. When he told me that, I leant out of our window in Calais and whistled until black clouds rolled in and fat dollops of rain smacked the windowpanes.

Vlad only arched an eyebrow at me. He is used to my theatrics.

So far, we have been siblings, cousins, uncle and niece. The dullest was playing siblings – no one approached me, in fear of my older 'brother', yet now that I am supposedly married, I am apparently much more desirable. Vlad does not bat an eyelid, though I have noticed that he accompanies me more often these days.

We have also been apart. It has been fourteen years since the day my son died, and I grew frustrated at the sixth year mark. I left my maker and went to the forests, spending countless days meandering through the trees, looking for Baba Yaga, looking for my son. Vlad, too, has left once or twice. He likes to play his hand in the wars that spring out every few years. I tell him that he should have been born an Englishman, during the Cousin's War, the War of the Roses, so he could always spend his anger on the battlefield.

In the market, I let him lead me around the stalls. They have been erected on crisp, clean grass, to give the nobility a taste of country living, even though most are 'baron' this, or 'duke' that, or 'earl' of whereveriwant. Most of them here hail from the country; or rather, from the peaceful, flower filled rolling hills, though they cannot name what is being planted, nor the herbs growing in their gardens. Sometimes men whisper in my ear that their blood is rooted in the wild lands of the north, near the borders. I roll my eyes. My 'husband' is wilder than they will ever know.

We stop at the far end, near a stream that is bubbling away. At least, the others think it a stream. Baba Yaga would shake her head, amazed. I do, too, as it is a fountain that a donkey has to walk around, prompting water to flow around the pipes and make a pleasing, trickling sound.

"I have," I finally answer and I stick my hand in one of the hidden pockets in my skirt and offer him three silver spoons.

"Silver?"

"The very same," I say. I have tied ribbons onto the ends of them, all in the same blue colour. "Choose one."

I am very smug when he takes one – it does not seem to bother his skin and he stares at it, then at me. He wants to ask 'how', but I shrug in advance. I don't know; it was simply a guess that silver given from my hand to his will not hurt him.

He unwraps the ribbon, and looks at the tiny letters.

"What does it say?" I ask, near breathless.

Vlad looks at it again. He laughs, one of the only real laughs I have ever heard. He throws his head back and laughs into the night sky and I laugh, too.

"What does it say?" I press him, curling my fingers around his arm to draw his attention back to me.

"Navarre," he pronounces with an indulgent shake of his head.

"Navarre?" I frown. I think of the three places I wrote on the ribbons: Burgundy, Scotland, Rome. All came to me in a dream, where I had been walking in the sun, a black haired man beside me.

I did not write Navarre. Suddenly I am smiling up at him, feeling a well of joy uncurling in my stomach. I am happy, to see my magic bending so it encompasses him, too.

"Navarre, then," I agree and when he takes my hand to place it into the crook of his elbow, I feel a sudden, strange wish that I might remove my gloves, to feel his bare skin that I can see glimpses of through the slashes of his sleeves.

.

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* * *

A/N

Alyssa; thank you!


End file.
